The Action-Reaction Learning framework is clearly only recovering
lower-order reactionary behaviour. The actions and reactions are
mapped in an almost direct manner and the short-term memory really
only contains the last stimulus that triggered the system. Thus,
higher order behaviours that involve complex chains of actions are not
addressed. For instance, there are no mechanisms for dealing with
sequences of actions that are strung together into some more complex
meta-action. There is also no representation of the actions forming
sub-goals and these forming then goals in a sequential evolution. The
ARL system does not identify goals, plans or motivations which are
some of the essential concepts in higher order behaviour. Therefore,
we only addressed a basic definition of behaviour as a
stimulus-response mapping. The transition to higher order behaviour is
an interesting issue and remains a topic of future work.
Tony Jebara1999-09-15